Twas the night before Christmas and all over the ‘net,
Not a creature was stirring except a few cyber threats
The firewalls were configured at the egress with care,
But that wouldn’t stop us from being hit by ransomware. 1/
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While attackers hit the web server and established a beachhead
Mama with her EDR and I with my IDS
Were ready to tackle this hot infosec mess. /2
Down in the SOC there arose such a clatter,
I logged into my dashboard to see what was the matter.
This thing had better work, it cost so much cash.
How in 2020 can this thing STILL require Flash?! 3/
The alerts lit up the dashboard, it produced such a glow
But it’s because the threshold for alerting was configured so low.
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But 300 false positive alarms. I thought “I’ll be here all year.” 4/
Then a little old DLL, signed by SolarWinds,
Was really the Russians, masters of supply chain break-ins.
We need some new vendors said the CISO, and the salespeople came. 5/
She shrugged, and she grunted, and she called them by name:
Now AlertDashboard, Now FaceDancer, Now PacketPrancer, and CyberOxen.
On DarkComet, On WebCupid, On DataDumpDonner, and BlinkenBoxen! 6/
With no DNS filtering and egress that was open to all,
The Russians said “why even bother to deploy a firewall!
The off-site DFIR team prepared here to fly,
But with no logging configured, things were going awry. 7/
Their OPSEC was bad and the attackers they knew,
So their rootkit crashed a critical server with a death screen of blue.
“It might not be Russia, the packets could be a spoof!”
“But attribution is nuanced, and you’ll never have proof” 8/
The analyst checked the logs, and then spun around,
Saying “there’s nothing we missed, supply chain attacks are profound”
The CEO was worried Russians wanted his secrets to loot,
But the CISO said “we told you that’s China, you’re not being astute.” 9/
A cluster of servers, secured in their locking rack,
Still fell victim to this insidious cyberattack.
The alarms on the dashboard – oh how they twinkled! This one’s gonna be hairy…
The CISO admitted “this one is bad, I’ve never seen malware so scary!” 10/
The boss said “get this incident done, wrapped up with a bow”
But the CISO said “this isn’t CSI:Cyber, it’s going to be slow”
The boss said “this was preventable but your skills are beneath”
The CISO responded “stop insulting my team or I’ll knock out your teeth” 11/
The CISO ruled with an iron fist, just like Machiavelli,
And said “follow the 3-2-1 rule so we aren’t all so smelly!”
The budget was plump, a sign of cybersecurity health,
Everything purchased had been installed – nothing bit-rotting on the shelf. 12/
A wink of her eye and a twist of her head,
Soon gave me to know infosec misogynists would be dead.
“Why?!” said the analyst, “we’re just having fun at work!”
She said “Stop being a Neanderthal, a dope, and a jerk!” 13/
As every incident responder most certainly knows,
Working incidents through the holidays absolutely blows
The IR team remediated the issue and one of them let out a whistle.
The team lead said “if you leak to the press, expect a dismissal.” 14/
Then I heard them exclaim as they drove out of sight – “Just stop clicking on stuff, we can’t do this again tonight!”

Happy whatever you celebrate from all of us at @RenditionSec to you and yours! /FIN

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More from @MalwareJake

24 Dec
Alrighty - here's my $.02 on the topic (was trying not to poison the well, but will also use this thread to collect my thoughts).

First, it's important to note that Facebook not is suing NSO just because it created and sold an exploit. That's lost in so much of the discussion 1/
Now governments have sovereign immunity in most matters under international law. Mercenaries, not so much (IANAL, talk to yours).

But certainly suppliers of weapons to a government wouldn't be held liable if they are used against another nation, right? 2/
That's what NSO is arguing - they are just a provider of weapons. The problem is that NSO went far beyond "just providing the exploit." It appears that in most (if not all) cases they delivered the exploit and managed collection from targets as well. 3/
Read 10 tweets
23 Dec
There’s an additional aspect to this particular government shutdown: these disruptions are favorable operating conditions for cyber adversaries. I hear we’re in the middle of investigating a fairly large breach...

A shutdown now will ABSOLUTELY harm our ability to remediate. 1/
Yes, I know “essential personnel” will still report to work. But as a former fed myself (who was always considered essential), I can tell you that things obviously don’t function as normal, even for your “mission essential” activities. 2/
And some of the damage is already done. Managers are already preparing for shutdowns, distracting them from focusing on where they need to be placing effort on breach investigation and response. The damage will be so much worse if the shutdown starts though. 3/
Read 4 tweets
23 Dec
Got this in my mail today and it’s some next level BS. Shame on these people for trying to threaten people into voting. Image
That’s right “Club for Growth” - I’m getting your message out there, but perhaps not in the way you hoped... Image
I'm not saying that you should sign up for Club For Growth's email updates, but if you had the desire to do so using, oh I don't know, any email address, here's the link to do so:
clubforgrowth.org/user-registrat…
Read 4 tweets
23 Dec
On today’s #dogWalkingThread, let’s talk about the recently disclosed abuse of SAML by attackers to “bypass” MFA.

For those not familiar with the concept, SAML allows the separation of identity providers (IDP) and service providers (SP). Why the separation? 1/
Suppose you want to access a service, and the service needs to authenticate you, but you really don’t want the service ever having your credentials (EVER). As long as the SP trusts the IDP, this is no problem. You authenticate with the IDP and the IDP tells the SP “trust them” 2/
Let’s consider passports as an analogue. I’ve traveled to many countries I wouldn’t want to have all my identity data, but the State Department serves as my identity provider. Because the country I’m entering trusts the US State Department, the passport is enough. 3/
Read 14 tweets
21 Dec
I’ve had multiple people (mostly executive leadership) ask me whether they should be concerned about destructive cyberattacks in the #SolarWinds incident. Two have cited elevated concerns because of attribution to Russia and the history of NotPetya. 1/
Obviously predictions in cyber age REALLY poorly, so evaluate this as lower quality as time marches on.

That said, I define a threat as the intersection of intent, opportunity, and capability. Let’s discuss each of these in the context of what we know about this threat actor. 2/
Capability: there’s no question that this very capable threat actor has the capability to perform destructive cyberattacks. Ignoring the fact that almost everyone does, Russia has demonstrated the ability with NotPetya and even against critical infrastructure with LightsOut. 3/
Read 11 tweets
19 Dec
For laypeople demanding evidence that Russia is responsible for the #SolarWinds breach (and subsequent operations), be patient, it will come.

As an analogue, prosecutors typically don’t discuss specifics of ongoing investigations. This is because the target may interfere. 1/
This analogy unfortunately breaks down precipitously. First, this is less like a robbery than a set of ongoing hostage situations. The problem is that we don’t know how many hostage situations we have yet. Every piece of evidence we discuss publicly can hurt us. 2/
With the release of every indicator of compromise, we always must balance the value of helping victims with the risk that the attacker will change their tradecraft to prevent future detection.

This adversary has shown that they practice counterintelligence and WILL change. 3/
Read 13 tweets

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